The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in CH

[Blueangel]

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	Perhaps you will explain why the FTSE 100 is higher today than before the vote? The markets believe UK profits in £ will be higher in 2 years than today, it's very simple the future is good for business.

Quite simply, Brexit hasn't hapened yet. What you're seeing now is the equivalent of a high street closing down sale. The markets have as much chance of predicting the situation in 2yrs time as I have of predicting the lotto numbers for this weekend. There are far too many factors in a state of flux, and way too many unknowns.

[marton]

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	Traveling to customers for a meeting does not require FMOP........ Visas were not needed pre 1973, so no reason to think anything will radically change. TBH less business travel today than 10 / 20 /30 years ago. You did not see British goods get more expensive over the last 3 years either! The exchange rate has virtually no impact on the price in shops due to something called competition. You sell in a market place for the max price the market will bear.

"The exchange rate has virtually no impact on the price in shops"

	Quote:
	Compass, the catering group that runs staff canteens for companies including Google and Mercedes-Benz, warned it would increase prices on some UK contracts as a result of rising food costs following Britain’s vote to leave the EU. Richard Cousins, chief executive of Compass, which serves around £5bn meals worldwide a year, said: “The weakness of sterling will lead to a little bit of food price inflation and we will need to raise the price on some contracts in the UK.

Source

and karma

	Quote:
	The Danish toy company Lego said Saturday it won’t advertise anymore in Britain’s Daily Mail, one of several British newspapers targeted by a social media campaign for their anti-immigrant stances.

Source

[fatmanfilms]

	Quote:	Blueangel
	Quite simply, Brexit hasn't hapened yet. What you're seeing now is the equivalent of a high street closing down sale. The markets have as much chance of predicting the situation in 2yrs time as I have of predicting the lotto numbers for this weekend. There are far too many factors in a state of flux, and way too many unknowns.

The stock market is forward thinking, they are best guessing of future profits, they are usually 'about right' on average.
Weak pound means higher profits for the FTSE 100 companies in pounds, nothing to second guess.

[fatmanfilms]

	Quote:	marton
	"The exchange rate has virtually no impact on the price in shops" Source

They may or may not be able to get away with increasing their prices, time will tell. Canteens generally don't have a competitive advantage, Compass may loose some UK contracts as a result.

[marton]

Ever more unforeseen new Brexit complications pop up

	Quote:
	More than 3 million European Union citizens living in Britain after Brexit will have to be issued with “some form of documentation”, the home secretary Amber Rudd has said. Amber Rudd told MPs she would not yet set out the details for any new EU ID card. The home secretary’s statement came in response to Labour’s Hilary Benn, who told MPs that EU citizens already in the UK would need to be documented so that employers and landlords could distinguish them from EU citizens arriving after Brexit. The latest migration figures published last Thursday showed that almost 100,000 EU citizens living in the UK have applied to the Home Office to secure their status in Britain. A backlog is rapidly building up in a system that currently only processes 25,500 permanent residence applications annually If Irish citizens were required to register as EU nationals it would also complicate the situation in Northern Ireland, where more than 20% of the population only have Irish passports.

Source

[Blueangel]

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	They may or may not be able to get away with increasing their prices, time will tell. Canteens generally don't have a competitive advantage, Compass may loose some UK contracts as a result.

Compass won't lose anything. They have far too many brands in too many locations, and aren't the second biggest catering contractor in the World for nothing! I probably see upwards of 20 Compass branded outlets between my home and Zurich HB which is a journey of 12mins. Then there's all the airlines they supply, the retail 'own brand' high end food dishes, etc...etc... A couple of canteens won't hurt them.

Disclosure: They were my client for two years between 2005-2007 and were some of the best people I've ever worked with.

[fatmanfilms]

	Quote:	Blueangel
	Compass won't lose anything. They have far too many brands in too many locations, and aren't the second biggest catering contractor in the World for nothing! I probably see upwards of 20 Compass branded outlets between my home and Zurich HB which is a journey of 12mins. Then there's all the airlines they supply, the retail 'own brand' high end food dishes, etc...etc... A couple of canteens won't hurt them. Disclosure: They were my client for two years between 2005-2007 and were some of the best people I've ever worked with.

It's amazing that you can believe that, Compass have had numerous profit warnings over the years, the last time was in 2015 when "Corporate restructuring plan for its offshore and remote businesses and emerging markets would cost between £20-£25m per year in 2015 and 2016, and would weigh on profits."
and more "An additional restructuring plan seems to be a good decision but highlights a challenging environment in some countries."

So Compass had problems last year, will do so again...........

[Urs Max]

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	Perhaps you will explain why the FTSE 100 is higher today than before the vote? The markets believe UK profits in £ will be higher in 2 years than today, it's very simple the future is good for business.

In a longer-term perspective the FTSE-100 is roughly unchanged which translates to 15% loss in value due to the pound's drop.

A picture says more than a thousand words so here you go. FTSE-100 in Google's 5-year chart:

[Aeneas]

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	Perhaps you will explain why the FTSE 100 is higher today than before the vote? The markets believe UK profits in £ will be higher in 2 years than today, it's very simple the future is good for business.

Because nothing has changed yet? Because it's going to be business as usual for the next 27 - 28 months? Because there's still an element of wait and see, whether the UK remains in the common market, before there's any flight of capital? It's not terribly complicated to understand why we've not seen any major downside yet.

Any chance you address some of the points I made? I understand that they may be a little inconvenient to your World view, but ignoring them and simply trying to get me to answer whatever points you'd like to fire at me isn't terribly convincing either.

[Blueangel]

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	Traveling to customers for a meeting does not require FMOP........ Visas were not needed pre 1973, so no reason to think anything will radically change. TBH less business travel today than 10 / 20 /30 years ago.

Different times. Different workforce.
You're thinking anglo-saxon workforce travelling within Europe, not execs of British companies who don't hold British passports and require Schengen visas.

I never understood why people travel so much on business when there are so many virtual office options out there, but contracts still need signing in black ink and employees still need to do their shift rotation in Alaska. This is coming from someone whose bread and butter was Business Travel.

Since 2005, I've seen travel budgets squeezed to within an inch of their lives for the majority of travellers, whilst a very few still maintained carte blanche even though their colleagues were being denied.

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	You did not see British goods get more expensive over the last 3 years either! The exchange rate has virtually no impact on the price in shops due to something called competition. You sell in a market place for the max price the market will bear.

But I have seen British goods gradually get more expensive, not cheaper, since May.

My personal weekend essentials shopping basket challenge has crept up from £24 in May to just over £35 in October even though I shopped at the same branch of Tesco on each occassion. That's a big leap and it's literally anextra 20p here and an extra 30p there, but it all adds up. High ticket items are a different story, but it's the everyday essentials that hit the most people and affect consumer confidence, not the cost of a brand new Jag.

[Cata1yst]

	Quote:	marton
	I assume these people were the ones meant; The key findings from this eighth study show that, for the financial services (FS) sector in the UK in the year to 31 March 2015: • The sector paid an estimated amount of total taxes in the region of £66.5bn, or 11.0% of total UK Government tax receipts (2014: 11.5%). This includes both taxes borne of £26.2bn and taxes collected of £40.3bn. Source Of course if you have a source for your "comments" then please do share it, otherwise it seems you would be happy to walk away from over ten percent of UK Govt. income?

The question is "What should they have paid?"

A short 2 minute search finds these articles.

https://www.theguardian.com/business...orporation-tax

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-exc...n-2014-2015-12

https://www.theguardian.com/business...-tax-avoidance

http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-bri...0UH0DN20160103

http://www.rte.ie/news/business/2016...tax-avoidance/

https://www.rt.com/uk/338497-banks-tax-evasion-panama/

[marton]

	Quote:	Cata1yst
	The question is "What should they have paid?" A short 2 minute search finds these articles. https://www.theguardian.com/business...orporation-tax http://www.businessinsider.com/r-exc...n-2014-2015-12 https://www.theguardian.com/business...-tax-avoidance http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-bri...0UH0DN20160103 http://www.rte.ie/news/business/2016...tax-avoidance/ https://www.rt.com/uk/338497-banks-tax-evasion-panama/

""What should they have paid?""

	Quote:
	Low tax bills for banks are in large part a legacy of huge losses reported in the years since the banking crash of 2008. Those losses created an unprecedented stockpile of tax credits, which banks have been using to offset against taxable income as they have moved back into profit.

Its the tax law innit!

Obviously the Govt.does not see this as a problem as they announced cutting Corp. tax to 17%!

As I mentioned before; the City finance groups pay over 10% of the total of UK taxes so it will be a big loss when Brexit drives them away

[marton]

	Quote:	Blueangel
	............ I never understood why people travel so much on business when there are so many virtual office options out there, but contracts still need signing in black ink and employees still need to do their shift rotation in Alaska. This is coming from someone whose bread and butter was Business Travel. ...................

That is why we need FMOP or easy access to visas in order to sell services to the EU.

I once had to arrange a series of training courses in UK to be given by a non-EU and the business visa process is a nightmare

[Cata1yst]

	Quote:	marton
	""What should they have paid?"" Its the tax law innit! Obviously the Govt.does not see this as a problem as they announced cutting Corp. tax to 17%! As I mentioned before; the City finance groups pay over 10% of the total of UK taxes so it will be a big loss when Brexit drives them away

Yes they're all leaving on the overnight train to Frankfurt?

If you know something about the City of London it's a state within a state with it's own laws and links to many tax havens, such as Guernsey, Jersey, BVI and Bahamas. These links are utilised to the fullest of course.

http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/...rporation-city

If the pigs are squealing it must be the right thing to do.

They won't be leaving in a hurry.

"So, the corporation has two main claims to being a tax haven: first, as a semi-alien entity, floating partly free from Britain (just as the Cayman Islands are), and second, as the hub of a global network of tax havens sucking up offshore trillions from around the world and sending it, or the business of handling it, to London. These are possibly the biggest reasons for the City's wealth and power - yet how many Britons understand this?"

[fatmanfilms]

	Quote:	Urs Max
	In a longer-term perspective the FTSE-100 is roughly unchanged which translates to 15% loss in value due to the pound's drop. A picture says more than a thousand words so here you go. FTSE-100 in Google's 5-year chart:

Your taking a 5 year view, the 10 & 15 year are also total crap, however since BREXIT it changed. The investment performance of the UK has been appalling since 2000. Worst performance of any major markets, being in the EU has not been good for business, just for Bankers & their bailouts.

[Urs Max]

	Quote:
	But I have seen British goods gradually get more expensive, not cheaper, since May.

To be fair, that may well be a seasonal issue. You need to compare with 12 months ago.

[Blueangel]

	Quote:	marton
	I once had to arrange a series of training courses in UK to be given by a non-EU and the business visa process is a nightmare

Plus, if the UK is "taking control of our borders", we don't yet know what the entry requirements will be. If there's going to be a quota system, I do wonder if the UK will have the 90 day no permit system that Switzerland has. We don't want to go the way of Russia which is expensive and time consuming, but until an outline is given, business managers won't know.

[Blueangel]

	Quote:	Urs Max
	To be fair, that may well be a seasonal issue. You need to compare with 12 months ago.

The basket is my essentials to get me through the weekend when I land back in the UK. Coffee, milk, sugar, bread, cheese, toilet rolls, shower gel, shampoo, etc, aren't seasonal.

[fatmanfilms]

	Quote:	Blueangel
	My personal weekend essentials shopping basket challenge has crept up from £24 in May to just over £35 in October even though I shopped at the same branch of Tesco on each occassion. That's a big leap and it's literally anextra 20p here and an extra 30p there, but it all adds up. High ticket items are a different story, but it's the everyday essentials that hit the most people and affect consumer confidence, not the cost of a brand new Jag.

	Quote:	Blueangel
	The basket is my essentials to get me through the weekend when I land back in the UK. Coffee, milk, sugar, bread, cheese, toilet rolls, shower gel, shampoo, etc, aren't seasonal.

Hyper inflation would actually solve the debt problem, your claiming an inflation rate in excess of 100% per annum. I don't believe it.

[Urs Max]

	Quote:
	The markets believe UK profits in £ will be higher in 2 years than today, it's very simple the future is good for business.

	Quote:	fatmanfilms
	Your taking a 5 year view, the 10 & 15 year are also total crap, however since BREXIT it changed. The investment performance of the UK has been appalling since 2000. Worst performance of any major markets, being in the EU has not been good for business, just for Bankers & their bailouts.

In fact I'm taking the two-year perspective you claim the markets are looking ahead.

Personally I think it's more like 2-4 calendar quarters, but that's a different issue.